


not if it's you

by absopositivelutely



Category: RWBY
Genre: 5+1 Things, Character Study, F/F, POV Second Person, Post-Canon, Post-Salem, blake belladonna protection squad, minor ptsd?, salem is GONE you hear me, she just needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:34:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22484206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/absopositivelutely/pseuds/absopositivelutely
Summary: “I think you need a break,” she says suddenly.“From what?” you ask, not because you don’t know but because you wish it wasn’t true.“This,” Ruby says, waving her hand aimlessly. “Fighting. You deserve to live, Blake.”//(or; blake finds herself again)
Relationships: Blake Belladonna & Ghira Belladonna, Blake Belladonna & Kali Belladonna, Blake Belladonna & Ruby Rose, Blake Belladonna & Sun Wukong, Blake Belladonna & Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long
Comments: 5
Kudos: 144





	not if it's you

**Author's Note:**

> look these past few episodes have been chaotic but the bees are the only ones currently thriving so i'm writing them to cope. additionally i'm afraid for blake's health in the volume finale so by god am i going to make her happy.
> 
> hope you enjoy! <3

> **pylades:** but i will take care of you. 
> 
> **orestes:** it’s rotten work. 
> 
> **pylades:** not to me. not if it’s you. 
> 
> — _orestes,_ euripides

**i.**

After the war, there is silence. That is something nobody tells you: how the screaming will become a part of you in a way you never could have imagined, and how when it finally goes away it will feel like there is something fundamentally wrong. You wake up and the stillness of the night air works its way under your skin. 

Out the bedroom door, through the kitchen, onto the balcony. The concrete is rough under your bare feet, and you press your toes against it. Remember how to feel, you think, memorize the way the wind draws its cool fingertips across your cheek. You trace the shape of the stars above your head; breathe in, outline one constellation, breathe out. There is shuffling behind you. Sudden noises still unsettle you, but even without your extra set of ears you would know these footsteps by heart. 

The glass door slides open. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself,” you say softly, not turning around. The curve of your shoulders fits neatly under the weight of Yang’s arm. 

“Bad dream?” she asks, and you shake your head. She raises an eyebrow and you shrug. Her thumb draws circles into your shoulder. 

“Woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep,” you say. Yang’s forehead is pressed against the top of your head. 

“Too quiet,” she murmurs into your hair. She is one of a handful of people who understands. You hum in agreement, and it comes out sounding suspiciously like a purr, rumbling contentedly in your throat. Yang dips her head lower, lips brushing across your collarbone, and you tilt your head to the side. 

“You should go back to bed,” you whisper. She huffs out a breath of air against your neck. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.” 

“Can’t,” she says, words pressed against your skin, “not without you.”

Guilt tastes bitter under your tongue. Yang meets your gaze steadily, lavender eyes seeing through you. You bite your lip and look away. “Sorry,” you say, at the same time she tells you, “Don’t you dare apologize.” 

Her eyes are still on you. “Blake,” she says, insistently. 

“Yang,” you say, quieter. “You shouldn’t have to deal with my problems. You have your own.”

“What if I want to?” she challenges, turning so she is facing you. “Blake, we’ve talked about this.”

“Doesn’t mean I feel better about it,” you say, your hand finding hers. Yang presses your knuckles against her mouth so tenderly you want to cry. “I don’t understand why you would want to.”

“Because it’s _you,”_ Yang says, so plainly, as if the answer is that obvious. You don’t know what the look she is giving you means but it makes your throat close up. You don’t know why. Yang smiles at you so gently you think maybe she does. You press a kiss to her shoulder instead of speaking. 

**ii.**

Step to the left, draw your weapon, duck under a claw, swing your sword outwards. Fighting is a language you are familiar with, and you fall back into muscle memory as you face off against the Alpha Beowolf, alternating hits with Ruby. The Beowolf roars and Weiss’s glyph shimmers beneath your feet, lending you the speed to dodge its attack. From the Grimm’s other side, you catch Yang’s eye and nod, throwing Gambol Shroud over to her so you can pin the Beowolf down. Another glyph materializes in front of Ruby, her bullets turning to ice as they pass through. The Grimm shatters into shards of ice. 

Still, you look for the next enemy. Your blood roars in your ears. Fighting is a language you are familiar with, but lately you worry it will become the only language you remember.

Ruby’s voice, high and clear, comes in somewhere to your right. “Blake, you okay?”

“Fine,” you say, “just tired.”

The mission is over, you remind yourself, and you fall back into line with your team. Ruby calls in to report the mission as a success. They can go home now, she tells them. You watch as your team exchanges high fives and triumphant smiles. Somehow you feel like you haven’t done enough.

You let your forehead rest against the window as the train speeds through familiar landscapes; not too difficult for you to find, since the war has taken you almost everywhere. Yang has disappeared a few cars down in search of food, Weiss is on the phone with company business, and Ruby is seated next to you, uncharacteristically quiet.

“I think you need a break,” she says suddenly. You turn to look at her, the little sister you never had, and not for the first time you realize how wise she is for her handful of years. 

“From what?” you ask, not because you don’t know but because you wish it wasn’t true.

“This,” Ruby says, waving her hand aimlessly. “Fighting. Having a mission. You keep doing this out of obligation. You deserve to _live,_ Blake. Figure out what you want.”

“I can’t just leave you guys,” you argue, though you know there is no point. Stubbornness is a Branwen trait but Ruby seems to have picked it up from them anyway. “I don’t want to hurt her,” you say, softer. “

“You won’t,” Ruby says, “I know you won’t.”

Your ears flatten against your head. “I’ve done it before.”

“And you won’t do it again. Take a break. Leader’s orders,” Ruby tells you, smiling at you. “We’ll be here when you come back” She looks so much like her sister. They are both so hopeful, despite the world repeatedly knocking them down. You think maybe you could learn something from them. “We had a team meeting about it and everything. _Please,_ Blake.”

“You had a team meeting to fire me?” you ask her, sounding indignant. You offer her half a grin when she starts to protest, and burst into laughter when she halfheartedly scowls at you. “I don’t deserve any of you,” you say, leaning over to give her a hug.

“Well, you’re not getting rid of us ever,” Ruby says, muffled from where her face is pressed against your shoulder. Somehow, you know she is telling the truth. 

**iii.**

Everything is the same and everything is different. You are ten years old again, standing on the same road that you walked down every day from school to home; you are twenty one years old today and your home is the only thing that remains from your memories. One step forward, then another. You cannot bring yourself to walk any closer. 

“Hey, Sun,” you say into your scroll instead. “Are you in Menagerie?”

Sun greets you with a hug that lifts you off your feet and you bury your face in his neck while you blink back sudden tears. It has been months, closer to a year, since you last saw him. His smile is just as bright as ever and you remember that family never forgets. 

“I know why you called,” he says, tail curling around his body to flick in the direction of your house. “You’re trying to go back home.”

You laugh, a startled little breath of air. You know by now not to question how he knows. The answer is simply that: he knows you. “I was on my street. I couldn’t go any further.” 

“They don’t blame you for leaving again,” he says. This time his tail hooks around your drink and pulls it towards him. “You saved the world. Good smoothie, by the way.”

“Give it back,” you say, making no move to take it from him. “It’s not just that. I don’t want to disappoint them.”

“They’ll be proud of you no matter what you decide to do,” he tells you. You shrug, looking away; Sun’s eyes are focused intently on your face. “So will everyone else you love. You’re more than just a Huntress.”

“I don’t know who else I can be,” you say, and Sun smiles so softly you want to cry. 

“Blake,” he says, eyes wide and earnest. “We all want you to be happy. You can be with her without having to be anything else. That’s enough.”

You inhale slowly, one long, stuttering breath. You are in love with her. This is something you should have known since the day she leapt in front of you with her arm outstretched. Even before then, you remember seeing her in the forest in those first few days at Beacon, watching her taking down a Grimm, and thinking that you could fall in love with her. Not right then, but someday. You breathe out and it feels like someone has picked up your world and placed it down correctly, like it had been just slightly off-center before. 

“Oh,” you say, the syllable punching out of you, and Sun’s jaw drops. 

“You’re just realizing?” he gasps. You reach over to swat him on the arm. 

“Shut up,” you suggest lightly. “I guess I should go home, shouldn’t I.”

“Yeah,” Sun says, standing up. His arms wrap around your shoulders and it is not the same sense of belonging that Yang gives you, but it is a familiar comfort nonetheless. “I’ll check in on them whenever I visit,” he promises. “Bring Yang here next time, too.”

“Of course,” you say. There are different kinds of love, you think, squeezing Sun’s hand one last time. You wish you could hold on to every kind of love just as tightly. “Thanks for always knowing what to say.”

Sun shrugs, scratching the back of his neck. “You’re an open book. I just had to learn how to read you.”

**iv.**

Menagerie doesn’t feel like home; you don’t remember the last time it did. But your parents’ arms around you feels right, the same way fighting by your team’s side feels like they were made to fit into your life, the same way Yang’s hand in yours feels like finding something that you thought was lost, and you wonder why you were ever afraid to come home. 

“Are you okay, Blake?” your mother asks you, like you are five years old and you skinned a knee from a bad fall, not like you are twenty one and you don’t know what you’re meant to do with yourself. 

“I don’t know,” you admit. Your voice sounds small even to yourself. “What are you supposed to do after saving the world?”

“The reason the world is worth saving,” she says, glancing across the table at your father and taking one of your hands in hers, “is to be with the people you love.”

“They’ll be there for you,” your father says, hand resting on your back. Breathe in, breathe out. You will be okay, you think. 

**v.**

You think it is fitting that Atlas is named the way it is; a weight settles on your shoulders when you step off the airship. There are a handful of memories you carry with you as you make your way to the Schnee manor. A flash of silver, Ruby’s body warm and trembling under your hands; your muscles tensing as you pick yourself up from the ground. But there are also these memories: bright lights reflected in Yang’s lavender eyes, music pulsing to the beat of her heart, your team gathered together in a dorm room that almost reminds you of when you first met. You can’t quite decide if you liked Atlas or not. 

Weiss doesn’t run the company, and not for the first time you wonder what the Weiss you first met would have thought of her being a Huntress. You know that you are proud of her. She tells you that she is proud of you, too. 

“Thank you,” you tell her, trying to fold all the meaning you can into those words. You think she understands. 

“Come on,” she tells you, standing up. “I didn’t invite you here just to talk about emotions.” There’s the Weiss you first met, you think, and from the way she rolls her eyes at you it seems like she knows what you want to say. It draws a smile out of both of you. “I came home because Whitley wants me to try out a new shipment of Dust. Quality control, I suppose. I figured you wouldn’t mind a fight.”

You smile, then. This is the language you and Weiss share; you both fight better with your own partners but the Xiao Long-Rose siblings are better at conversation than the two of you. War keeps taking and taking from you but sparring with your best friends is still one of your favorite things in the world. Weiss hands you a vial of Dust and you draw your weapon. 

A glyph freezes you to the floor and you shift away from your clone, gravity Dust boosting you upward. Weiss realizes as you land behind you and she spins around in time to block your blade with her own. You lean into it, throwing your weight forward. Her arms are shaking but your weapons remain crossed; you trade grins, drawn sharp with adrenaline. 

“Don’t hold back,” Weiss gets out, between gritted teeth. She meets your gaze with bright blue eyes and you wonder what she sees. 

“I’m not,” you say, the high-pitched screech of metal against metal resounding in the training room. She shakes her head and drops her arm, sidestepping you gracefully and sending out a sheet of ice under your feet. You flip backwards, leaving clones that explode into flame in your path. Weiss dodges them all with a practiced ease. 

“Not just here,” she calls from across the room, and suddenly she is standing in front of you, the outline of speed glyphs fading from the ground. You bring your sword up just in time to block her. “I mean with everyone.”

“So you did invite me here to talk about emotions,” you say, between trading blows with Weiss. She manages to shrug and stab at you in the same breath. You step backwards but she manages to knock Gambol Shroud’s sheath out of your left hand. You find yourselves in the same position, blades crossed and neither of you able to gain any ground.

“We can take whatever you want to throw at us,” Weiss says, Myrtenaster pressing forward. You push back. Weiss doesn’t move. “We know you can handle us. Just trust us to do the same.”

“Okay,” you say, and lower your weapon. It surprises you, how easy the small admission comes. “I do trust you. All of you.”

“Then tell her,” Weiss says softly, sheathing her rapier, and suddenly you know you aren’t talking about just the team anymore. “And come home when you’re ready. We’ll all be there.”

**+i.**

The alcohol is warm when it goes down, a trail of fire blazing its way down your throat. Your shot glass clinks against the table when you put it down and raise an eyebrow at Yang. Her eyes flick up and down and you want her lips against your neck, tracing the line of heat left behind by the whiskey. She looks like she’s thinking about it. 

Nora cheers behind you and the moment is gone. Next to her, you see the look Ren is giving her and you smile. “Your turn, Jaune!” Nora exclaims. Ruby snickers from the couch, turning to watch as much as she can while still leaning against Weiss, who had taken three shots and announced that she was going to live on the couch for the rest of her foreseeable future. 

“Vomit Boy,” Ruby whispers loudly, prompting Jaune to down the shot. He lasts all of two seconds before whining. Oscar pats his back consolingly. Your friends dissolve into laughter, and under the table, Yang slips her hand into yours. 

“Hi,” she murmurs, breath warm against your ear. 

“Hi,” you say, “why are you—”

“Are you happy?” Yang asks lowly. Her voice is smooth and warm and the color of honey and whiskey down your throat. It sounds like a plea; it sounds like _do we make you happy,_ like _please let me love you._

“Yeah,” you say, pressing up on your tiptoes so you can kiss her, and when you pull away you want the image of her in a painting. Her hair is still golden in the dim light, and she smiles at you like she is seeing the sun rise after a long night, like she hears you say _I love you too._ “Yeah, I am.”

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments always appreciated :) 
> 
> find me on [tumblr](https://qwowo.tumblr.com/)!


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